I have a nice permanent scar & bump on the side on my hand from where a rooster sunk its spur a full half inch into the side of my palm.
that hurt like a ...

and who was the idiot that left a live mains terminal laying out!!!!!!

It was at the school where my friend was studying. Or maybe college, it was about 40 years ago. Possibly another student had done the deed, - I would think it had more to do with incompetence than homicidal intent.

 

Besides confusing the right / wrong end of the iron twice, I also managed to burn deeply its own electrical cord. The awful smell was a timely warning.

Because of a similar "attempt" with one of my scope's proves, I learnt to clean the bench prior to start soldering. I became obsessive with that but long time I do not have any incident.

The worst injure I got was when I tried to break (do not ask me why, because I do not recall) a ferrite antenna with my bare hands. A cut in my left index was the consequence. It took years to heal completely, maybe ten or more.

Still have my finger but no more ferrite antennas to break!!

 

Mental note: do NOT try to break ferrite with bear hands.

check!

That must have been quite a slice! 10+ year healing time! geez!

 

Mental note: do NOT try to break ferrite with bear hands.

check!

That must have been quite a slice! 10+ year healing time! geez!

I do not know the translation. I think it is "sore" (llaga in Spanish) that never healed and was prone to open any time and bleed sliglty.

I always suspected that some minute debris were inside making the process difficult.

 

I do not know the translation. I think it is "sore" (llaga in Spanish) that never healed and was prone to open any time and bleed sliglty.

I always suspected that some minute debris were inside making the process difficult.

I guess it is possible a fragment of ferrite may have been embedded in the cut.

So you would be right..That would have slowed healing quite a bit.

I had a girlfriend whos brother stabbed her in the leg with a pencil when they were young ( >10yrs old) kids. The tip of the pencil broke off in her leg.

She still had the graphite under her skin some 20+ years later. Sometimes you could see the dark color of the graphite, and sometimes it was barely a bump.

I thought alot about it... Was it the different light that made the graphite "shine" through, or was the graphite "floating" and coming closer and farther from the surface?

Dunno. I should call her up for drinks.... maybe I can experiment a little more

 

I have burnt my finger nails with molten solder...

It actually isn't painful and you don't notice until later... but it does smell weird...

However for the sake of your fingernails don't try it at home!

 

I was about 14 or 15 years old. I had just gotten a soldering iron for a Christmas present, but I don't think it was the kind intended for soldering small electronic components. I guess it was actually a soldering gun, where you pull the trigger and it heats up the tip until it glows red. It looked something like this:

Anyway, I remember this quite clearly--I was trying to desolder a 7805 voltage regulator from the circuit board from an old modem or something. I guess I was putting a lot of pressure on the gun, and it suddenly jumped off of the pin I was working on, slid across the board, and the red-hot tip sank deeply in between my index and middle fingers. I will always remember the sizzling sound and the stench of melted flesh that came with it. I remember actually seeing the iron sink into my skin, and I think I was more scared than hurt. I didn't feel any pain until I got it to start cooling off in a bowl of ice water. It actually left white flaps of burnt skin on either side of where the iron entered. I went to the emergency room where I waited 3 hours before someone would come see it, and then all the doctor did was put some aloe on it and covered it with gauze. And, of course, he had to see that I hadn't had my latest tetanus shot, so I got to have that too. Overall, it was just a terrible evening

 

With a gun, it is possible to use 14 ga wire to sub for the regular tip. The soft copper gets a bit hotter. And, if you have a long loop, will actually shoot a blob of solder when you pull the trigger after it is hot.

That blob will not quite clear your knee.

 

I just dropped solder on the bottom of my bare foot on accident.
It was accompanied with much cursing.
It's no going to blister, but it's definitely more sensitive than the hand XP

 

UGG, know whats worse than burning yourself?
Dropping the soldering iron on your dog and burning his foot.
Smell of burnt hair makes me wanna hurl

 

I don't remember any good solder burns but I did once have a cracked cap on a horizontal output tube use my hand for a ground. As I jerked my hand out, the high frequency jolts burnt little holes in my hand and it looked like a sewing machine did the job on me.

Then there was the time the boss told me to drill a hole in a 4 inch pipe that was holding up the ceiling. I got a good grip on the steel cased drill with 3 wire cord, reached around the pole to get a good grip on it, and there was a disassembled receptical on the other side of the pole. The 120 volt wire dug into my skin and headed right across my chest to the other hand with the grounded drill in it. I cleaned up the construction dust on 10 feet of the floor when I finally kicked myself away from that!

 

Youch!

In that last sentence, are you saying you fell 10 feet?

 

I was standing on the floor when this started. Actually, I went blank for a few seconds. Then the circuit breakers in my brain started resetting. I looked at my helper with a horrified look on my face and I kind of squeaked at him. He decided I was joking and laughed at me. I realized I could move my legs, so I kicked. The result was that I kind of jetted backwards across the tile and cleaned up 10 feet of dust before I stopped. Then I took a 15 minute break and fired the helper.

 

When I was about eight years old, during summertime with no shirt on, I walked into a hot soldering iron Dad had left hanging over the edge of the bench so it wouldn't burn it.

It burned me real bad. Smelled like bacon. And Mum slapped Dad senseless.

 

Then I took a 15 minute break and fired the helper.

Too F***ing right !!! I would have electrocuted him first then fired him haha XD

 

Then I took a 15 minute break and fired the helper.

I think we should set up a stupid dart system.
If someone does something stupid you can shoot them with a stupid dart and people will know to avoid them.
If a car has 3 stupid darts in it the cops can take it away.

 

I touched the ignition capacitor in a gas boiler. Luckily the wrist of the same hand was resting against the boiler. The main problem was the muscle spasm which made me gash the back of my hand.
Can we remove these stupid darts after a few years?

 

I'm not sure about removing the stupid darts. I seem to have a 50 year cycle. Every fifty years I shut a car door on my finger, walk into a chair leg and break a toe, stuff like that.

But seriously, after that experience I make sure that my helper knows he might have to drop-kick me off a hot wire and try to re-start me, and I promise to do the same for him. I still have 12 years left for that one to cycle around, but I'm not taking any chances. If I don't have at least 2 layers of safety between me and death I break out in a sweat that tells me I'm lying to myself about safety. That's why, when the 440V-3 phase disconnect didn't, it only vaporized my screwdriver. Hence my rule:

If you keep allowing a percentage chance that it will kill you, the odds will eventually pay off.

 

Every fifty years I shut a car door on my finger

Did you know that you can drill the nail with a pin vice and a #40 drill and the nail won't come off? It does sting a bit when the drill goes all the way through, though.

 

Someone I knew well as a kid got a shock which might deserve a stupid award. He was in the habit of testing small batteries by using his tongue. Don't try that at home folks, but that's not what did the real damage.

That happened when he got hold of a old valve (tube) portable radio for spare parts. It still contained some not quite dead batteries. Never having seen such things before, he wrongly assumed that the B126 HT battery it contained was 9V. There were no exposed terminals, just some holes designed to receive a little plug, but that didn't put him off: he duly bared the ends of a couple of short lengths of hookup wire, and poked them in. Guess what he did with the other ends?

The battery was later measured at about 65V using his Dad's AVO meter. No doubt the voltage was less during the accident, but it was enough for him to "see" a flash of light, and to get a fairly nasty burn. It could have been worse...